What Do The Golden Globes Mean For The Oscars?

Figuring out what the Golden Globe awards mean about the Oscars is kind of an existential exercise, like figuring out what the Oscars mean about anything. Not that the Academy Awards aren’t important — they help the box office figures of the recipients, they give obituary-writers something to start their stories with when old winners die, they provide work for Billy Crystal — but they’ve become a kind of finish line instead of a nice side benefit. The goal of movies is supposed to be to make a good picture, not to make the Best Picture.

But Oscars is how we have decided to measure things, and the Golden Globes is how a bunch of interlopers have cut into the action. Indeed, Sunday night’s broadcast had a bit of Academy Award fustiness about it: the freewheeling ceremonies of yesteryear (that would be 2011), with a host who said terrible cutting things about innocent bystanders, were replaced by a more formal parade of self-congratulation presided over by a tamed comedian. Without the element of surprise (not to mention the element of mean-spiritedness), Ricky Gervais was like a little boy trying to say naughty things so the grownups would be shocked and pay attention to him.

One thing this means for the Oscars is that on Feb. 26, when they’re given out, Crystal will probably look pretty good: his shtick of parodying the winners isn’t exactly fresh either, but it’s usually clever, which is more than you can say about, for instance, Gervais’ Kim Kardashian jokes. Shooting fish in a barrel is worthwhile only if you can add some panache to the kill.

The Oscars themselves are in the same confused state as they were before the Globes were distributed: there are three, and perhaps four, movies that are likely to split the main awards.

The Artist was nominated for six Globes and won three of them: best comedy or musical (which it isn’t, by the way), best actor (a real coup for a French star in a silent film) and best score (a story in itself, considering how Kim Novak, of all people, surfaced to complain that the music borrowed from Bernard Herrmann’s score from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. There’s a fine line in Hollywood between homage and plagiarism, but in this case, The Artist paid for the use of the music.)

That seems to set The Artist up as an Oscar front-runner, except that Michel Hazanavicius lost the Best Director Globe to Martin Scorsese, whose Hugo was a labour of love by a man who is impassioned about movie restoration. There are connections between the films — Hugo also pays tribute to silent films and it’s set in France (The Artist is a French film set in Hollywood) — but it could mark a surge for the movie, which has been flying beneath the radar in most of the pre-Globe, pre-Oscar awards that are given out by groups of producers, directors and film critics. All of them have their own meanings about Oscars as well.

The supporting actress award went to Octavia Spencer, whose performance as the sharp-tongued maid was one of the highlights of The Help. Among the nominees was Berenice Bejo, who plays Peppy Miller, the ingénue in The Artist. She was probably a longshot anyway, but her loss was an indication that The Artist wasn’t going to be one of those juggernaut winners that carries along everyone in its wake.

The Help, meanwhile, became a Globes also-ran. This may not mean much either: in the past few years, the Globes have rarely predicted the Best Picture winners. They’re better with actors: last year all four of the actors who won Academy Awards had also won Globes the previous month. On Sunday, Viola Davis, an awards front-runner, lost the Best Actress in a Drama award to Meryl Streep for her stunning impersonation of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Coincidentally, Michelle Williams won the Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for her stunning impersonation of Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn. Conclusion: awards committees like stunning impersonations.

However, one of the many differences between the two awards is that a movie like The Help is right up the alley of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: it’s Important, it’s sober, it comes with positive values and it rights an historic wrong. The Globes people, for all their newfound sense of responsibility, still seem to be more concerned with giving awards to famous people so they’ll come back next year.

Which brings us to George Clooney, winner of the Best Actor Globe for The Descendants, which was also named best drama. It’s certainly going to compete on Oscar night, and Clooney is a strong candidate, especially now that the prescient Globe people have chosen him over such rivals as Michael Fassbender (Shame) and Brad Pitt (Moneyball.) The Descendants itself was nominated for five Globes and won two of them. This means something as well. We’ll find out on Feb. 26, if we can wait that long.